Local janitors inspire striking in other cities (picketing nationwide)

Striking janitors from Houston flew to Washington, New York and Sacramento on Tuesday and set up picket lines to protest their low wages and lack of health insurance....In sympathy with the Houston workers, janitors in more than 30 cities, including Chicago, Philadelphia and San Francisco, went on strike. Janitors in Indianapolis, who filed charges of unfair labor practices against ABM on Monday, also joined the strike.

The janitors from Houston began walking the picket lines in front of several buildings that are cleaned by ABM on the East and West coasts, said Andrew McDonald, spokesman for the Service Employees International Union in Washington, D.C., which is trying to organize the commercial cleaners in Houston and Indianapolis....As many as 10,000 janitors work in Houston cleaning the city's office buildings at night. They're mostly immigrant women who earn about $5.25 an hour for the part-time work. The majority work for one of five national cleaning companies, including ABM, which dominates the local office-cleaning market.

Thanks to the gropenator. All unions came out to support teachers, firefighters, and police in their protests against him. This has really brought about a new level of collective feelings. (OOPS, did I use that forbidden work, collective?)

3. With ABM's billions, they can't cough up a living wage for their slaves

Edited on Wed Jul-20-05 12:32 PM by downstairsparts

There ought to be a law.

ABM Janitorial Services operates 111 branch offices in 42 states, the District of Columbia and one Canadian province.

ABM Industries Incorporated is among the largest facility services contractors listed on the New York Stock Exchange. With fiscal 2004 revenues in excess of $2.4 billion and more than 73,000 employees, ABM provides janitorial, parking, security, engineering and lighting services for thousands of commercial, industrial, institutional and retail facilities in hundreds of cities across the United States and British Columbia, Canada. The ABM Family of Services includes ABM Janitorial; Ampco System Parking; ABM Security Services, which includes American Commercial Security Services (ACSS) and Security Services of America (SSA); ABM Facility Services; ABM Engineering; and Amtech Lighting Services.

I love how somebody by the name of Bill Bux, apparently some kind lawyer representing some behemoth building association, warns the janitors against picketing and "intimidating" their colleagues, and threatens that if they do not report to work, they risk losing their jobs. From what I read, doesn't sound that they have much to lose.

Powered by DCForum+ Version 1.1 Copyright 1997-2002 DCScripts.com
Software has been extensively modified by the DU administrators

Important Notices: By participating on this discussion
board, visitors agree to abide by the rules outlined on our Rules
page. Messages posted on the Democratic Underground Discussion Forums are the
opinions of the individuals who post them, and do not necessarily represent
the opinions of Democratic Underground, LLC.